Incredibly lazy fix. Herp Derp, increase mana cost!
As stated previously as soon as mana and regen increases in future content patches bubble spamming will once again become optimal.
The only REAL way to prevent it is to limit the maximum number of targets that Shield can be active on.

Base mana cost cannot just be increased as we go up a tier because it will screw over newly dinged Disc Priests.

My issue with this is that it has simply left discipline priests with weaker alternatives. It's fine to bring PW:Shield down a bit, but in return another part of their healing should be increased (perhaps via buffs to DA, perhaps some focus on holy nova or some more interesting single-target mechanics) because as it stands, discipline will now once again be playing like a poor person's holy priest (raid-healing wise).

At least this doesn't really affect their tank healing capabilities, which is something - but right now discipline turns to shields because it's other tools are relatively mediocre with very few talents dedicated to their improvement.

The mana system in its entirety is flawed. You either balance mana in such a way that it is far too limiting in the early tiers, or you make mana costs reasonable for the first few tiers and then have people completely disregarding mana at the end.

The best solution I can think for this would be a zone-wide mana debuff in the higher tier of raiding, i.e. Sunwell's avoidance debuffs. This would make mana an important consideration throughout all tiers of raiding.

That being said, if they did take that approach, the PW:S nerf would be reasonable as it would continue to be impactful throughout the expansion cycle.

Not sure what you are getting at with post here, should they take it away? Leave it alone? It is like CoH in WotLK, using one spell for an entire fight is ridiculous, do you honestly feel like you accomplished something when you sit there and spam one button for an entire fight?

This is probably the easiest solution, reworking a spell that has been around since Vanilla would be pretty stupid imo. A quick hotfix like this is the best solution for this problem, so they may have to hot fix it again later, who cares? If only all class balancing was this easy.

I agree. It's a lazy fix, and frankly, it's about what I expect from Blizzard at this point. While I like the forums and community (on the fan sites, not the official forums), I just don't like what they're doing with the game. I've personally quit, potentially for good, over how a lot of things have been handled. It's sad for me, because I've really enjoyed this game for almost 6 years now.

In the end, this "fix" fixes nothing, just pushes the problem to the next tier of raiding. As soon as players are geared for that tier, the problem will return. Pushing the "fix" again to the next level is going to do nothing except hurt new players. A fresh 85 is going to struggle if they keep pushing the fix up higher, while nothing will change for a current tiered person.

Originally Posted by FallenSystm

Not sure what you are getting at with post here, should they take it away? Leave it alone? It is like CoH in WotLK, using one spell for an entire fight is ridiculous, do you honestly feel like you accomplished something when you sit there and spam one button for an entire fight?

This is probably the easiest solution, reworking a spell that has been around since Vanilla would be pretty stupid imo. A quick hotfix like this is the best solution for this problem, so they may have to hot fix it again later, who cares? If only all class balancing was this easy.

1) It's a lazy fix. Instead of addressing the issue of why the players are exclusively using that one spell, they went about making it unfriendly to do so. That isn't a fix, it's a punishment.
2) While it may "fix" the problem for top geared players, it will hurt everyone that isn't top geared. The reason for the spam of one ability is because for top geared players, it's too easy to do. The cost isn't worrisome so it's able to be done. Yes, that's all well and good for the top geared player, but another player that isn't in the best gear is going to suffer a lot more as a result. I'd venture to say that if this "fix" was the same one they use on the next tier of raiding, an entry level 85 priest won't be able to go Disc because the mana usage is just too intense for Disc to handle.